So, you’ve found an article on Old Fulton New York Post Cards (https://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html) and it’s time to create the citation. What do you do with the long URL that refers to the highlighted image returned by search?

Shortening the URLS

Here’s a way to come up with a shorter URL by working some search-and-replace magic:

First, copy the big old long URL to a word processing document. You can get it by right-clicking a sidebar image link.

It will look like this:

https://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fultonhistory.com%2FNewspapers%252023%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2520%25201865%2520Jul-Sep%25201868%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2520%25201865%2520Jul-Sep%25201868%2520-%25200001.pdf%23xml%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.fultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D6f41775f%26DocId%3D2003870%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cDISK%2520S%26HitCount%3D3%26hits%3D9b1%2B9b2%2B9b5%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fultonhistory.com%2FNewspapers%252023%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2520%25201865%2520Jul-Sep%25201868%2FRome%2520NY%2520Daily%2520Sentinel%2520%25201865%2520Jul-Sep%25201868%2520-%25200001.pdf&xml=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D6f41775f%26DocId%3D2003870%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cDISK%2520S%26HitCount%3D3%26hits%3D9b1%2B9b2%2B9b5%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&openFirstHlPage=false

Now, do the following:

1) Remove everything after the first pdf

2) Remove everything before the second https

3) Replace the characters between https and www with ://

4) Replace %2F with /

5) Replace %2520 with %20

You will be left with this:

https://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%2023/Rome%20NY%20Daily%20Sentinel/Rome%20NY%20Daily%20Sentinel%20%201865%20Jul-Sep%201868/Rome%20NY%20Daily%20Sentinel%20%201865%20Jul-Sep%201868%20-%200001.pdf

If you’ve done it correctly, it should lead to the same image the long URL does, only without the highlighted keywords. Of course, I haven’t tested it extensively with a variety of titles. Let me know how it works for you!

How to Find Waypoints

If you want to use waypoints, you now have the information you will need to easily determine the path. For example, the URL above refers to image 0001 found in Rome Sentinel images for 1865 July-September 1868. Start at https://fultonhistory.com and click on “Go and Browse My Archives.” You may need to log in. Click on “Historical Newspapers,” and navigate to the correct newspaper. Bookmark the page; it will save you time if you need to find articles from the same title later.

Now, look for the correct month/year section, and navigate to the correct image. (In some cases, browsing will lead to a 404 file error. If you figure out a way around that, please let me know.)

How to Easily Look One Image Forward or Back

If you need to look forward or backward to figure out which newspaper issue the image of interest comes from, just change the PDF image number in the short URL. For example, the image just before this one (https://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%2023/Rome%20NY%20Daily%20Sentinel/Rome%20Ny%20Daily%20Sentinel%201891/Rome%20Ny%20Daily%20Sentinel%201891%20a%20-%200607.pdf ) will end with 0606.pdf. Unfortunately, if you want to see what comes before an 0001.pdf image, this won’t work.